Jul. 22nd, 2018

kareina: (Default)
My trip home from Durham has been an adventure. When first I booked my flights I knew that Stephanie and her family would be in France, so I wouldn't be able to visit them on my way to or from Durham. When it finally got close enough to time to travel for it to be possible to book trains I made a half-hearted attempt to see if I knew anyone else in the Edinburgh area who would want to see me, but when I didn't find anyone straight away I just booked a late night train from Durham to Edinburgh, thinking I could just go straight to the airport and sleep there (there not being any trains early enough to make a 09:00 flight if I didn't leave Durham till that morning.

However, at Cudgel War, as I did my goodbye round of hugs Master Duncan said "You should come visit some time, we live near Edinburgh", to which I replied "I am flying there now". He pointed out that he wasn't home now, and I said that I would go through there again in a week and we agreed to continue the conversation over FB during the week and we could sort out details.

Therefore I changed my train tickets to go to Edinburgh Thursday afternoon instead of Thursday evening, and met him at Waverly Train Station when he got off of work (this timing turned out well, since my advisor's wife wound up having her baby very early Thursday morning, so wasn't available to do stuff in the lab with me anyway).

Duncan and I enjoyed a pretty train ride across the River Forth to his home, a pretty, spacious house with a nice garden full of berries and other interesting things they have planted. After dinner he and I took a walk the four blocks to his local castle ruins, after which I did my yoga and went to bed early as we needed to be out the door early on Friday.

Helen works at a university not far from the Edinburgh airport, so she dropped me off there on her way to work, which had me there early enough that the computer wasn't yet showing the gate. Therefore I sat dawn and read and worked on sewing until they announced the gate, after which I went straight there.

I was among the first to scan my boarding card and went down and boarded the bus. Which went nowhere. After a bit they sent us back inside and told us that there was a technical issue with the plane and an engineer had been summoned. So I started doing my yoga while we waited, during which they announced that they would update us with more information at 10:15.

When I finished yoga it was only 09:26, so I asked the guy at the gate if it would be fine to go get some food since there was still well more than a half an hour till they had planned to give us more info.

He said sure, but to listen for announcements and watch the screens. The food area was quite a bit away from the gates, and I was hungry for oatmeal, which was available in the actual restaurant.

I went in, ordered my oatmeal, ate it quickly (it took way longer to get the food than it did to eat), paid at 9:56, and went out to look at the screen, which said "gate closed" for my flight. So I hurried back to the gate, where they told me I had just missed the flight. Never mind that I had heard zero announcements while in the restaurant (and I had expected to be able to, since I had heard all of the announcements when I was at the gate, even when not wearing my hearing aids, the speakers there were so loud and clear. Yes, I was wearing my hearing aids in the resturant).

They sent me downstairs to the ticket agent, who first told me there wasn't another chance to get me home till Sunday on SAS or their partner airlines. So I sent Stephanie a text and she said they were just back from France and would cone get me. However, the ticket agent then found me a seat on the 21:00 flight to Stockholm Arlanda.

So Stephanie and her daughter Emily picked me up and I got to see their new house (they moved 3 weeks before heading to France to visit his family). We made a yummy lunch, played a game, and took a nap. Then they took me back to the airport. This time, I boarded the plane without difficulties. It was a wonderful, delightful surprise to get to see them this trip, when we had thought we were going to just miss one another. I love how such things tend to work out.

The flight landed just after midnight Stockholm time, at the end gate in the International terminal, where the seats have no arms between them, and no one was present save for us getting off the plane. Therefore, I did the logical thing and took my pillow out of my bag and lay down to sleep. About 04:00 I woke needing to pee, and noticed that there were a few others sleeping or reading at some of the other gates. I decided that it would be a good chance to catch up on logs, so I sat at one of the desk/breakfast bar things for a couple of hours, then took a nap and finally decided to head to the next terminal at 09:00. Of course, that was between incoming flights, so passport contact was unmanned, and I had to call the posted number to find someone to officially let me in to Sweden.

That gave me several more hours to take it easy, get caught up on my logs, do a bit of sewing, read a little, etc. The second flight was a little late, but not so much, and I was home just after 15:00, only about 25 hours later than originally planned.

The weather at home has been unusually hot, getting up over 30 C while I was gone. Today was cooler, only 29 C, which is still much too much. The basement is cool and wonderful, but upstairs was feeling a bit oppressive. Luckily, as I type this (01:40) it has cooled down outside and we are having a thunder storm. Sadly, the people who built the house made the windows open outwards, which means that if I have them open in the rain the wood frames will get wet, which isn't good for it, so they are closed. (It isn't possible to have the window open and the screen properly in place, and I really don't want mosquitoes and gnats in the house.

Profile

kareina: (Default)
kareina

June 2025

S M T W T F S
123456 7
8910 1112 1314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags